Lynn Neary

What's In A Category? 'Women Novelists' Spark Wiki-Controversy

Lynn Neary — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:26:00 +0000

It all started one night when writer Amanda Filipacchi was browsing through Wikipedia and noticed an absence of women under the category "American novelists." At first, she thought the female writers being moved off the page were not important enough to be on it.

'Burgess Boys' Author, Like Her Characters, Finds Refuge In New York

Lynn Neary — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Elizabeth Strout, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Olive Kitteridge, sets much of her work in Maine, where her family has lived for eight generations. But Strout herself has lived most of her adult life in New York. In her new novel, The Burgess Boys, she writes for the first time about the city she now calls home.

On a late winter afternoon, Strout visited Parke Slope, the Brooklyn neighborhood where much of the story is set.

Amazon Could Expand Recommendation Services With Goodreads Purchase

Lynn Neary — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:46:00 +0000

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Online retailer Amazon has acquired Goodreads. It's a popular site where people who love to read exchange reviews and recommendations about books. As NPR's Lynn Neary reports, Amazon now has a powerful new tool for enhancing its customers' ability to find out about books they might want to buy.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: In 2007, Otis and Elizabeth Chandler started Goodreads in their living room. They wanted to create an online community of readers who could talk to each other about books. Now, Goodreads is the world's largest book recommendation site.

How Ellen DeGeneres Helped Change The Conversation About Gays

Lynn Neary — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:55:00 +0000

In 2008, during the brief window when it was legal for same-sex couples to get married in California, perhaps no couple drew more attention than Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.

After their wedding, photos of the couple were everywhere; DeGeneres, beaming, in a white suit and holding hands with de Rossi, the very picture of the princess bride so many young girls dream of being one day.

'Wave' Tells A True Story Of Survival And Loss In The 2004 Tsunami

Lynn Neary — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:40:00 +0000

On Dec. 26, 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala was vacationing with her husband, her two sons and her parents in Yala, Sri Lanka. The day was just beginning when she and a friend noticed that something strange was happening in the ocean. Within a matter of minutes, the sea had wiped out life as she had known it. In a new memoir, called simply Wave, she recalls her experience with the tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people, including her own family.

Today, Deraniyagala lives in New York.

Has The Nook Saved Barnes & Noble From Going The Way Of Borders?

Lynn Neary — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:21:00 +0000

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Barnes & Noble Chairman and chief stockholder, Leonard Riggio, is looking into the possibility of buying the company's retail book business, but not the Nook, the e-book, the company had staked it future on.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

That news comes as the company is set to release its third quarter earnings on Thursday.

Woody Guthrie's 'House Of Earth' Calls 'This Land' Home

Lynn Neary — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:20:00 +0000

Woody Guthrie wrote thousands of songs in his lifetime — but as far as anyone knows, he only wrote one novel. Recently discovered, House of Earth is the story of a young couple living in the Texas Panhandle in the 1930s. They dream of building a house that will withstand the bitter winds and ever-present dust that constantly threaten the flimsy wooden shack they call home.

The novel is being released by Johnny Depp's new publishing imprint at HarperCollins, Infinitum Nihil.

E-Readers Track How We Read, But Is The Data Useful To Authors?

Lynn Neary — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:14:00 +0000

Reading always seemed to be the most private of acts: just you and your imagination immersed in another world. But now, if you happen to be curled up with an e-reader, you're not alone.

Data is being collected about your reading habits. That information belongs to the companies that sell e-readers, like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. And they can share — or sell — that information if they like. One official at Barnes & Noble has said sharing that data with publishers might "help authors create even better books."

The data is also, of course, a brilliant marketing tool.

A Colorful Anniversary: The Caldecott Medal Turns 75

Lynn Neary — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:24:00 +0000

Some children's book illustrators might not have gotten a lot of sleep over the weekend. That's because they might have been wondering if this could be the year they win one of the grand prizes of children's literature: the Randolph Caldecott Medal.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Caldecott, which is given to the most distinguished children's picture book of the year.

'Fifty Shades' Is The One That Got Away. At Least From Me

Lynn Neary — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:18:00 +0000

Sometimes "the one that got away" is a book that was easy to overlook. A little gem of a first novel, or a memoir by an unknown writer that unexpectedly captured everyone's imagination.

But sometimes, it's the elephant in the room that you just haven't looked at yet. Everyone knows about it. It's one of the biggest sellers of all time. It's a cultural phenomenon — it's Fifty Shades of Grey. And I ignored it until I couldn't anymore.

It wasn't just that you couldn't go anywhere without hearing about it. Nor was it the record-breaking sales.